In accordance with the development of various sensor and camera technologies, and a study on an autonomous driving technology through a combination of sensor and camera technologies has been actively conducted.
In the autonomous driving technology, a stereo camera serving as an eye of a vehicle is a very important element understanding a position and movement of an obstacle in front of the vehicle.
Generally, in an image processing technology using the stereo camera, a matching cost calculating process through comparison of similarity between left and right images, a cost optimizing process, and a final depth determining process are performed.
Among them, the matching cost calculating process is repeatedly performed for all pixels of an image. Therefore, as an amount of image data is increased, a rapid increase in a calculation amount and a logic load is generated.
Since a data amount of a high dynamic range (HDR) image is 1.5 to 2 times larger than that of a low dynamic range (LDR) image according to the related art, when a stereo matching algorithm according to the related art is applied to the HDR image as it is, a calculation speed is rapidly decreased.